Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

RETROSPECT

ill and remains for a definite number of days in childbed.’ Apollonius, the writer of the Argonautica, confirms this (ii, 101 1), and adds that the men lay in bed with their heads bound up, and that their food was cooked for them by the women in childbed and the childbed bath prepared for them.

Strabo (iii, 165) says the same of Celtic, Thracian and Scythian tribes, and then tells of a woman, who worked in the fields with men for a daily wage. Suddenly she suspected that she was pregnant, went a little aside, bore the child, and then returned to her work, so as not to lose her pay. When the owner of the field saw that the work fell hard on her, he sent her home with her pay, without knowing at first what the reason was. ‘The woman then bathed the child in a brook hard by, made the absolutely necessary swaddling-clothes from just what she had, and carried the little thing home with them.

RETROSPECT

We have reached the end of our labours, in the course of which the author has tried to give a representation of Greek ‘“‘ morals ” in the narrower sense of the word, and he hopes that he has at least in part fulfilled his task. In a work intended not only for the man of science, but also for the educated layman, material has been collected and worked, which can be afterwards checked, with the aid of the many references to authorities that are given throughout, by any person who knows something of the subject, and who will thus gain a deep insight into the morals of the ancient Greeks ; and for such a reader the conclusion would seem to be twofold. First, he learns that old Greek culture in all its divergences has its root and its prime cause in sexuality. Not only in the “ life of love ”, but also in religious aspects, in art and literature, in social as well as public life, in distractions and pleasures,

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